highlights / mobilizing against inequality

Mobilizing Against Inequality

Mobilizing Against Inequality

Collective action is critical to the defense of immigrant workers, and to their struggles for better wages and working conditions.

Mobilizing Against Inequality, opens a new online conversation about immigrant workers – their struggles for rights and representation and the organizations that advocate for them. This project outlines case studies and identifies new networks and research documenting inspirational examples and strategies of immigrant mobilization and movement building. As we witness an alarming escalation in xenophobic violence targeting Muslims in the United States and Europe over the past month, we focus in on the ways in which Islamophobia is being resisted - whether in the courts, on campuses, in the workplace, or at the ballot box. Learn more about Mobilizing Against Inequality→

Eduardo Rosario is the New York City Chapter President of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, he also works as an administrative coordinator for The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union (ASCME) local 375 and DC 37. In the interview below he details the relief efforts orchestrated by NYC unions in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

Romin Khan works for the German service workers union, ver.di, responsible for migration policy. In this interview, researcher Neva Low asks Romin about union attitudes and strategy in the face of anti-immigrant right-wing populism.

Jakob Mathiassen of the Copenhagen construction trade union 3F-BJMF summarizes the challenges and obstacles that European unions are facing organizing across national and cultural borders.Here we offer a brief introduction with a link to a summary of the report.

Mayor Svante Myrick, who has been in office since 2012 and attended Cornell University as an undergraduate student, led Ithaca in its Sanctuary City movement, and has continued to enforce and uphold this sanctuary status as the city fights against policies of the current Federal Administration. His collaboration with local organizations, along with his recent feature in Time Magazine on millennial politicians, demonstrate Mayor Myrick's dedication to Ithaca and his ability to inspire and relate to a generation that is on the frontlines of political action.

The Transatlantic Social Dialogue brought together practitioners and academics from Europe and the U.S. to discuss the rise of right-wing populism. Unions and nontraditional labor organizations play an essential role in resisting right-wing populism and building progressive coalitions to articulate a more inclusive and powerful vision for the working-class.

Michelle Zhao, an undergraduate in the ILR School, shares an account of student and community mobilization efforts protesting the Trump administration’s decision to terminate Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Guest worker visas and undocumented workers are often prevalent in many farming areas in the U.S., so we decided to speak with Carlos Gutierrez from the Leadership Team at the Tompkins County Workers Center to see what he had to say about these precarious workers and their health and safety.

With increased confusion surrounding guest worker visas, and recent changes in visa numbers under the Trump Administration, the Cornell Law School decided to host a colloquium to discuss the current state of Temporary Foreign Worker Visa program in both the U.S. and Canada. These meeting brough together academics and advocates to address this topic and discuss strategies for moving forward.